Carnival: The ultimate cure...

I haven't had many homesick moments here in spain due to the fact that I absolutely love it and technology makes everyone seem much closer. Alas, this week was a very hard week for me, until Carnival which made all my worries disappear. However, you do have to bare with me as I explain my frustrating start to the week.

I am not sure if it has to do with the "bad" weather we seem to be having, rain everyday, or the fact that little things that I used to laugh at and say "oh thats so spanish" have turned into daily eerks and annoyances. For example, I understand and fully support the siesta and have adjusted to most things being close from 2 pm to 5. However, when I went to the bus station to get tickets for Sevilla/Cadiz I wanted to buy tickets to Madrid as well. WELL the window that sold the Madrid ticket was only open from 4 to 5:15 and i went over at 5:20, minor annoyance that really peeved me.

Another factor that is über annoying is the flute playing man in the center. Beggars here in Mérida don't just sit there and beg, they try to earn their coins. Por ejemplo: the flute man will follow you for 10 mins till you give him money or flake off into another store. He completely ruined an attempt at a relaxing coffee in the Plaza on Monday as he decided our group was going to be his next source of income.

My last rant for the moment, is about our apartment. Landlords are a pain in any culture and even more so in Spain. Ours is named Cencha and resembles a certain Star Wars character whose name starts with J and ends with ut. Mean, but the facts are facts people! Anyways, a little piece on my shower tap is broken so the water does not go up to the shower head. I can take an amazing bath but alas, no shower. So I thought the landlord would take care of that. Nope. My responsibility, SO she calls a plumber, he comes, refuses to give me a price for what seems like a not needed replacement of the whole tap. I am still shower-less (we have 2 showers so no worries, but still annoying) but I am proud that I was not taken advantage of by the plumber and my landlord. In the end, I talked to one of my teachers and they are going to help replace the tap. I guess one positive of the situation is that it provided me a great opportunity to practice some new spanish.. fontanero y grifo (plumber and tap). And you try explaining that "the thing that makes the water go up into the shower head is broken and can come all the way off, but water still leaves the tap," in a foreign language...kind of funny ;).

OK so needless to say that the start to my week (that was all on monday) was not the best ever. However, the week proceeded to improve after some delicious chocolates. I have successfully made chocolate chip cookies using my oven and the ingredients I can find here in Spain. I brought some into my school and they were a hit so I had to share the recipe. Also I traded some cookies for some home made croquets (kind of like a breaded fried gnocci with ham in it) YUM!

The week was fun as my Mom had sent me Valentines so I gave them out to some of my classes in conjunction with an english lesson on planning the perfect Valentines date ... quite an interesting class. Apart from school I met with my regular private classes, including the triplets whose lessons I have finally mastered by concentrating on 2 letters of the alphabet a day and making some kind of puppet or toy that deal with the letter. Also, my "intercambios" are continue to be the highlights of my work week, speaking Spanglish is the most amazing thing ever and should be the language of the world!

So the most amazing thing about this week was our trip to Sevilla and Cadiz for Carnival. Carnival is what Spaniards consider to be like our Halloween, its not...it's 8 million times cooler. There are so many things that go into it, I highly recommend googling it to learn more because I can not do it justice. I'll briefly describe our weekend:

Friday: Sara and I went out into the center and there ended up being Chirigotas in a big tent in the center: groups of people dressed up and singing about different things. One group apparently dressed up like study abroad students and made fun of how they all come to Spain for the fiestas clearly not true ;). After a fun little night we headed home and set our alarms for 6:00am.

Satuday: Caught the 7 am bus to Sevilla to do a full days worth of shopping (Bimba y Lola and HM thank you for fabulous new clothes!)

Also, we made a Starbucks trip because like any typical American, I love their coffee. Sevilla once again was a beautiful city that feels very alive and invigorating. After shopping we headed back to the bus station to put on our costumes for Carnival: Cloudy with a chance of rain.

We overtook the bathroom as we put glitter all over and silver and white hairspray to really go for the cloudy affect. We looked good. really good. REALLY REALLY REALLY GOOD. There were 5 little rain clouds running around Sevilla for a bit as we picked up food and of course some beverages for our bus ride to Cadiz: home of the third biggest carnival in the WORLD.

We were honked at, laughed at and stared at...it was amazing. Also, we sported spray bottles to get that rain in there. The bus ride was done by a group called "We Love Spain" which caters to mostly American Kids studying abroad in Sevilla. Yet we were lucky enough to have a rowdy group of Spanish boys on our bus, singing all the way there (and all the way back!)

Once in Cadiz, it was madness. Imagine all the biggest university Halloween parties and triple it. That is not even 1/100th of what this was like. EVERYONE was dressed up:mailmen, barbies, lawn workers, cross dressers, barbies, ghost busters, lady bugs, endless possibilities including spanish Wheres Waldo. I can't express how crazy the whole night was. Some how we managed to keep a group of about 12 of us together through multiple locations and plazas pictures singing and dancing. Our costumes were perfect as we sprayed unsuspecting nurses, docters and bull fighters with our "rain" bottles.

To be fair, we did get a few drinks thrown at us and we were attacked back by Ghost busters, it was amazing. At 5:30am we headed back to the bus, and were back in Sevilla by 7 am. We ate churros and caught a bus and were back home in Mérida by 1:00. I am not sure I would do the night again because it was quite the marathon but I would love to go back to Cadiz and see carnival during the day as well as see cadiz the city itself on it's own.

Well, the best part about Carnival besides are amazing costumes is the fact that it means I have a 2 day work week and can relax for a couple days! BESOS